


A minor misunderstanding, solidarity, and reunion

by owlet



Series: Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Brief schmoop, M/M, May contain traces of cat hair, unadulterated fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 06:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14994440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlet/pseuds/owlet
Summary: Barnes should know better. Lidia should charge her phone.





	A minor misunderstanding, solidarity, and reunion

**Author's Note:**

> I realized in the Q&A that I had totally Dumbledored this topic, which is uncool. Therefore, I present you with wholly plot-free fluff.
> 
> Happy Pride month, y'all.

A problem with spontaneous makeouts in the streets of Astoria is that pretty much any Avengers battle ends up in front of at least 37 cameras. This has already been a problem, the 3 previous instances in which Barnes had assisted with various bad guys, prompting Pepper's PR team to practically turn themselves inside out, saying absolutely nothing.

But headlines like "CAPTAIN AMERICA GAY EXPOSE" and "THAT'S NOT AVENGING, CAP" are pretty discouraging, and the pictures are impossible to deny. In several, Barnes has his legs wrapped around Steve's waist. In one, there's visible tongue.

It becomes this whole thing. Assholes on a couple of news shows make commentary about Steve's moral fiber that make him so mad that it takes the combined forces of Pepper and Hill to talk Steve out of walking to the production office and busting some heads open.

Barnes maybe could've helped, but he doesn't exactly disapprove of the head-knocking plan.

Barnes doesn't sweat that stuff. The PR people will figure something out, hopefully that doesn't require him to make any kind of speech. Assholes are always gonna be assholes, until the end of the damn world. And some of the stuff on the internet's actually pretty nice. He gets a lot of compliments on his hair.

However.

A text from Lidia reading 'how could you' - that's upsetting.

Scary, even.

"But what does it mean."

"I don't know, Buck," Steve says, frowning at the screen.

It wouldn't be so bad, except that Lidia won't answer any follow-up texts.

Identified: bone-rattling fear.

"This doesn't make any sense," Steve says several hours later, frowning for the thirty-second time at their respective blank text screens.

Dinner's a fitful affair, the way they both keep looking at their phones. Esther doesn't text, and Ollie is stubborn on the entire subject of cell phones.

What is going on.

Barnes's tactical ability flees along with his spoken language. That the Olds might disapprove of him is a thought too terrible to hold in his head. They are necessary. But Steve is also necessary.

He does not wish to choose between them.

Steve puts an arm around Barnes's shoulders and pulls him close.

"This has got to be some kind of crossed wire, Buck. It doesn't make any sense otherwise."

Barnes identifies the desire to believe this statement. Steve squeezes his shoulders again.

"Dammit," he says after a minute, then thumbs on his phone and dials Esther.

It rings twice, then Barnes hears Esther pick up.

"Me and Bucky are coming over tomorrow," he says.

BUCKY AND I

Confirm.

"Wonderful idea, dearest," Esther says. "See you at noon for lunch."

Steve laughs once when he sets down the phone.

"I think we're being managed, Buck."

Maybe.

Barnes is unable to sleep more than a couple of fitful hours. This provides an opportunity to prepare peace offerings: biscuits, strawberry scones, and chocolate-dipped macaroons.

Rogers eyes the assembled ribbon-tied boxes wryly but does not object to being made to carry one.

It just.

Maybe if he had inadvertently crushed a small animal, the Olds' response would be understandable. Shitty behavior: deserving of censure.

But this thing with Steve. It is objectively a positive development.

CONFIRM

They should be happy.

Barnes identifies: disappointment.

He doesn't like it.

"Keep poking that bottom lip out, a bird's gonna come around and land on it," Steve says.

"We're in a car, asshole."

That's about the saddest excuse for distraction Barnes has ever experienced. Step up your game, Rogers.

 

Esther greets them at the door with her usual calm smile and cheek kisses, which should be a comfort but instead creates an additional level of confusion. Lidia stands by the sofa, looking thunderous, while Ollie sits, his arms around a brown book.

Thirty-seven seconds of silence accrue before Steve straightens, shifts the box to his right arm, and grasps Barnes's hand.

Thank the motherland. It's good to have something to hang onto.

"Look," he says. "I don't know what the problem is here, but Bucky and I are not gonna apologize for how we feel."

The responses do not clarify anything. Esther frowns, Lidia looks surprised, and Ollie hugs the book tighter.

"Apologize?" Esther says. "I made you a cake."

What.

"You – what?" Steve says. "But we thought. Lidia?"

Lidia puts her hand over her mouth.

"Lidia," Esther says, her voice so sharp that it might've been honed by Barnes himself, "what have you done?"

Lidia pulls her phone from her pocket.

"Oh," she says. "The battery's dead."

Steve looks at him, then looks back at Lidia.

"So you're not mad that we're together?"

"I'm mad that I had to find out about it on the news!" she says.

For fuck's sake.

"Lidia," Steve says. "Bucky's been freaking out so bad he couldn't talk."

Lidia winces.

"Now see, this is why I keep telling you to charge that thing," Esther says.

Lidia comes over and takes Barnes's left hand in hers. He can identify regret in her dark eyes.

"I'm sorry, Jimmy. It never occurred to me that you would think I'm anything but thrilled for you."

She looks at Steve, then back at him, and sets her foot firmly down on top of his.

"That you would _finally_ recognize what has been _obvious_ to everyone since approximately twenty minutes after we met you."

What.

Esther and Ollie laugh while Steve hides his dumb face behind his hand and Barnes resets his equilibrium.

"Lidia," he says. "You scared the crap out of me."

"I think I'm a little offended that you have so little faith in me," she sniffs.

CONFIRM

For fuck's sake, mission, I thought you were supposed to be on my side.

MAYBE

Sigh.

It is comfort to smile at them. To look at Steve and see his 'we're a couple of morons' expression mirrored back at him, bump his forehead against Steve's shoulder.

It's good. Situation normal.

Esther relieves them of their baked goods, clicking her tongue at his excessive emotion. Which he deserves.

"Go sit with Ollie while Lidia and I finish up lunch. He has some photos to show you."

They each take a seat on either side of Ollie, still hunched over his book, looking smaller even than usual.

"Ollie," Barnes says. "Are you okay."

"Yeah," Ollie says, but his voice is hoarse, so he clears his throat, then nods.

"Yes. I'm fine, Jimmy. Feeling like a bit of an ass for not telling you boys about this earlier. I was just in the habit of never talking about it much."

He lays the leather photo album on his knees, pats it with both hands.

"There's somebody I want you to meet," he says.

He opens the album, and there is a faded photo of two men in rumpled US Army jumpsuits, standing on a tank tread with their arms around one another's necks.

"There he is," Ollie says, touching the face of the taller man and speaking with such tenderness that he sounds almost young.

"There's my Wayne."

Oh.

OH

"Oh!" Steve says.

Confirm.

"That's your -?" Steve asks.

"Well, we weren't allowed to get married in those days," Ollie says. "But yes. That's my honey."

"Ollie," Steve says.

Ollie clears his throat again.

"I should've said something before. It's just. You never know, even these days, what people are going to say. And he's only been gone two years, I couldn't stand it if -"

He touches the photo again.

"Couldn't stand it if some asshole disrespected him," Barnes offers up.

This appears to be a correct assessment, because Ollie grins, more like his usual self.

"You got that right, Jimmy."

“How about that,” Steve says.

He too touches the photo, then looks up.

“How’d you know, Ollie?”

Thanks for that question out of nowhere, Steve.

CONFIRM

“Enh?” Ollie asks.

“How’d you know it was him?”

Ollie smiles down at the photo again, whatever he’s remembering obviously a memory that brings only happiness.

“I dunno, Steve. I just did. We had a smoke one day after mess, and there was just something about the way the light hit him, and the sound of his laugh. I fell real hard for him, and I guess I never got back up again.”

He grins up.

“You know how it is.”

Steve gets that look on his face that Barnes has learned is the indicator of an incoming (probably terrible) joke. He puts his hand on Ollie’s shoulder.

“Well, you’ve gotta know, Ollie, I’m a real idiot. I didn’t know until Bucky told me.”

That’s a valid point.

His smile softens.

“I should’ve known when I was when I was sixteen. Hell, I should’ve known when I was ten. But I’m told that I’m too stubborn for my own good.”

Confirm.

CONFIRM

Ollie pats Steve’s knee.

“Ah, you got to the important part, that’s what matters. When did you know, Jimmy?”

A much more concise answer.

“Eighty-five days ago,” he says.

It’s unclear why everyone in the room finds that so _funny._

Barnes’s reliable friend, the oven timer, saves him from yet another awkward situation.

Lunch is excellent, of course. And Esther was not kidding about the cake. It is baked in the shape of a heart.

Which is cheesy, but. Kinda nice.

And anyway, it’s chocolate with raspberry jam between the layers, which is a proven superior flavor combination.

The Olds clap, and there are back-pattings and cheek kisses all around. Lidia bangs her fork on the table and demands a kiss fourteen times, until they comply. With no tongue, because come on, this is not a tongue-appropriate situation. Continued: cheesy, but kinda nice.

After lunch, they all sit around with coffee and dig into Ollie’s photo album. There’s a whole lifetime of stories that they didn’t know. Barnes identifies a moderate level of regret that he hasn’t bothered to ask, in all this time, about what the Olds were like prior to living in the dumpy ex-building across the street.

Sub-optimal treatment of mission-assists.

Let’s do better, mission.

CONFIRM

Confirm.

It is a pleasure to listen to Ollie’s stories and look at the photos of his life with honey Wayne in California. Barnes can identify no available memories of California, though several of the holiday photos make him sit forward to place his face closer to the print.

“That’s the Grand Canyon, Buck,” Steve says.

Barnes identifies the Deeply Moved Voice. He looks up.

“You ever been?” Ollie asks.

Steve shakes his head.

“When we were kids, Bucky always said he wanted to go, but we never did. Haven’t yet.”

“I want to see that.”

“You will, Bucky.”

Good.

There are many photos – not only of Ollie and honey Wayne but of a number of people with similar features. Children who progressively grow up, and then new children. These photos make Ollie distressed.

“It’s been a while since you Skyped them,” Esther says gently, and Ollie nods.

“You’re still close?” Steve asks.

“Oh yeah,” Ollie says. “We were always a real tight bunch. My family – well, they had some real unkind things to say to me about how I wanted to live my life. But Wayne’s family hardly blinked an eye. We were just Uncle Ollie and Uncle Wayne, until all these babies were born, and then we were Poppy and Nunk.”

Ollie cries. Lidia and Esther enact an emergency protocol involving tissues and sherry. Steve, arguably more useful, puts one arm around Ollie and holds on tight. Cat Eleanor adds a healing layer of fur to Ollie’s shins.

Barnes sits tight and tries not to get in the way.

Once Ollie is breathing normally, Steve tightens his grasp and says,

“Now tell me what that’s about, pal.”

Ollie apologizes several times, and all the busy speakers in the room fuss at him.

“I just miss them,” he says. “I haven’t seen those kids since – since the funeral. Other than on the computer, I mean. Two years is a long time, for kids. They’ve changed so much, I feel like.”

His voice wobbles again.

“Why don’t you visit,” Barnes says.

Ollie wipes his nose.

“It’s not that easy, Jimmy, they’re so busy, and it costs a lot of money to fly out to California. I can’t just pick up and fly all the way across the country.”

What.

“Nonsense,” Lidia says.

“Confirm,” Barnes says.

“Double confirm,” Steve says.

DOUBLE CONFIRM

Oh, great, that’s going to be a fantastic development.

Steve uses his guilting powers for good and hassles Ollie into skyping honey Wayne’s family by pointing out that small children would lose their tiny minds at the opportunity to speak to Captain America.

What’s funny is that the parents seem more impressed by Steve and his cute little speech about his good friend Ollie. The kids mostly yell “Poppy Poppy” a lot and get into a fight over who gets to hold up their drawing first.

Steve weasels the word “visit” into the conversation and the family on the other end of the computer goes bananas to the point that Ollie resumes looking damp in the ocular region.

Nice. And with the crowd surrounding him to prevent any making of excuses, Steve and Lidia maneuver Ollie into planning a whole trip out to visit honey Wayne’s family. They get on the phone to other family members and plan a big hoopla. The mother cries a little, and Ollie cries with her in solidarity.

Barnes sends a quick text to building JARVIS, then hands his phone over to Steve, who verifies with honey Wayne’s family that the flight dates and times are acceptable before Ollie can do so much as squeak.

“Hold on,” Ollie says.

“Oops, my thumb slipped, I seem to have just bought them,” Steve says.

“I had no idea Captain America could be so snarky,” the mom says on the computer.

“Whatever it takes to get the job done, ma’am.”

She laughs.

“Maybe I’ve been stupid about it all,” Ollie says once they’ve rung off the video call. “I kept thinking it was so hard.”

“Sometimes it’s good to be wrong,” Barnes says.

He looks at Lidia, who winks her understanding of his double meaning.

 

“You said all the right things,” Barnes says later. “You fixed Ollie’s sadness.”

Steve puts his hand on the back of Barnes’s neck.

“You’ve taught me a few things the past few months about not sitting on my ass waiting for the things I want,” he says. “That sometimes you have to not let your head get in the way of your heart.”

Barnes cannot identify how he could have conveyed such information. He is unable to distinguish the origin of impulses among his own internal organs.

Therefore, he has inadvertently been either useful or smart.

Probably both.

“Good job me,” he says.


End file.
